Blog

Obviously I’m not a blogger. Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve made an entry. Obviously I need someone who’s a good PR person!!

With God’s blessing we are still going strong, however. This morning we co-sponsored the Coat Drive Give-Away at Rifle Middle School. Over 150 people were able to get a warm winter coat today and lots of sweatshirts, warm hats and gloves. This is The ROC’s 2nd year of coat drive involvement working in co-operation with Canyon Cleaners in Silt, The River Center in New Castle, The Salvation Army in Glenwood Springs and the Rifle Chamber of Commerce who all have been doing this for 5 years. Thanks to the many volunteers who helped set up Friday night, supervise and take it down this morning (35 Volunteers helped us at Rifle this year!!)

The Totes of Hope weekend food program for school kids is going well again this year. Last week we packed food for 261 Kids and the number keeps growing. We have from 8-12 volunteers helping each week with this program. I’m very grateful that the schools all send someone to pick the food up at the warehouse and I don’t have to deliver them this year, a great back saver!! We also have a volunteer who meets the Food Bank of the Rockies twice a month to receive the food, load it on our donated trailer and get it to the warehouse. I can’t tell you what a blessing Fred is to us for doing that!!

The Angel Tree Christmas Gift program takes off this week and the trees with kiddo’s requests will be on the trees in the stores so we will soon be collecting these gifts to give out in December. Thank you to our new Angel Tree director, Erin Reeves, who has enthusiastically taken this project on for us this year. There is a good group of volunteers who are eager to get going on this project as well.

Jeanne Bottroff has been busy writing grants for The ROC and we have had a good response so far this year. I was able to attend the Rural Philanthropy Days program that is held every 4 years in Colorado and this year (our 4th year of operation and therefore the first one we could have attended) and made presentations to 5 or the 40 grantors who made themselves available in a format that is not unlike “speed-dating.” Eight presenters sit with one grantor at a round table and have 2 minutes to tell what your organization does and to make an appeal. After some questions and dialogue they give you an indication as to whether your organization is a good fit for them and give you a green, yellow or red light to submit a grant application to them. The organizers of the event say that you’ve had a good day if you get 2 greens and a yellow. God blessed us with 4 greens and a yellow! So this meant that Jeanne has some grants to write. One organization contacted us and said “Don’t bother sending us a grant request, we’re just going to send you some money. Another one said that we didn’t fit what they were presently granting so they couldn’t grant us but they liked what we were doing so were just going to send us a donation. God is good and we have been blessed.

Our one concern is that we are going to lose the warehouse building we have been operating from the last 2 ½ years rent free. The business supplying the space to us is having to give up the lease on the building because the economy is so bad here that there is very little work for them. So we have till the end of November to find a new place. The bad news is that we have no budget to pay rent yet with the grant money we recently received for general operating we could pay a little rent for a while. The good news is that God has always watched out for us (after all this is His ministry!!) and we may have a lead on a building that would suit our needs in West Rifle. Please pray that this works out if it’s God’s will.

We still do lots of emergency needs with rent, utilities, auto repairs. This calendar year so far we have helped 362 people in 89 families with such things.

Thank you to those who are supporting us financially and with your prayers. Pray that God will keep us in good health and also send us workers specifically qualified to do the things we need done: business manager, emergency services director, community people to enlarge our board, and PR director, to name a few.